Rang Milanti, the Bengali card game like War

Suit matching, from Bengal

Rang Milanti means suit matching. Pagat, John McLeod's card-game rules site, has the only page of rules we found, so it is the one we follow. It calls Rang Milanti a children's game from Bengal, which it defines as Bangladesh plus the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura, and says it is typically the first card game a Bengali child learns. It files the game in the War group as loosely related to War, and credits Sarthak Das with explaining it.

It is said, in Pagat's words, that adults playing Twenty-Nine, which uses 32 of the 52 cards, were left with the 2 to 6 of every suit, and that two such leftover piles made a 40-card pack with ten of each suit. Today, Pagat adds, it is usually a full 52-card deck, or two mixed together for a big group. Only the suit of a card counts.

There is also a 2011 Bengali comedy film called Rang Milanti. If you came for the cast or the songs, this page is the card game instead.

Where it sits next to War

In War, everyone turns a card at once and the highest rank takes the lot. Suits are ignored, and Pagat calls it a children's game with no strategy in it. The rest of Pagat's War group shares a shape: nobody sees their cards, you turn your top card onto a discard pile, and under certain conditions you win the pile. What changes from game to game is the condition.

In Beggar My Neighbour a pay card, an ace down to a jack, makes the other person pay by turning one to four cards. In Slapjack it is a jack and the quickest hand. In Snap it is two matching ranks showing and the quickest shout. Money, a two-player game from Arab countries, wins the pile when the number of the card played matches the top card, which is Rang Milanti's move done by rank instead of suit, and Pagat says speed of reaction matters there. Here the suit matches, and nobody has to be quick.

One round, worked through

Every card is dealt out face down, and that is your stack. Cards that do not share out evenly go face up in the middle as the start of the pile. On your turn you turn the top card of your stack onto the pile. If its suit is the same as the card it lands on, you take the whole pile, your card included, into a collected pile of your own, and you turn one more card onto the now empty pile. If the suit is different, the card stays and the turn passes. Rank does nothing, and neither does colour: a seven of hearts on a king of diamonds is a miss.

For example, say four of you are at the table, thirteen cards each and none spare, so the pile starts empty. The host turns the seven of hearts onto nothing. Next, guest 1 turns the king of spades: a different suit, so it lands on the seven. Then guest 2 turns the two of spades. Spades on spades, so guest 2 collects all three cards, a two winning the pile from a king, and turns one more card onto the empty pile. That card cannot match anything. Now it is guest 3's turn.

When your stack is empty on your turn, shuffle your collected pile into a new stack and go on. When your last card misses and you have collected nothing, you are out. A capture can never put you out, because the pile you take becomes your collected pile. If somebody goes out, the pile stays where it is and the rest carry on matching on top of it. The game continues until one seat is left, and that seat wins. Cards left in the middle do not count.

Where the rules stop

The Pagat page is short. It is one informant's account, and nothing independent confirms it. On the page itself it gives no number of people (Pagat's index lists two to eight), no time limit, and no word on slapping the pile. We follow it as written and mark our own choices here.

We seat two to six people on one standard 52-card deck, and the host chooses how many. Pagat mentions two decks mixed for a big group, and we have not built that. A match takes the pile with no button and no race, since Pagat describes no slapping. The host turns first, since a room has no dealer, and turns pass by seat number, skipping anyone who is out. Three, five and six seats do not share 52 evenly, so those tables start with spare cards face up in the middle: one at three seats, two at five, four at six. The first card of the game can match one of them.

Pagat also sets no limit on how long a game can go. So we stop at 5,000 reveals. The seat with the most cards then wins, counting stack and collected pile and ignoring the middle. An exact tie for the most is a shared win. You should never meet it. In our test games, at every table size, most ended within a few hundred reveals and nine in ten within about 900. None reached 5,000. The board shows Reveal n of 5,000 throughout.

At the table: rooms, computers, tapping

Make a table, choose two to six seats and send each person a link. The lobby opens on four seats, and you can start short-handed with whoever has sat down. Nobody signs in and nothing downloads. Prefer the computer table? You get one, two or three computers, and they turn a card about every second. A table with people has no computers in it. It has chat, and voice if the person who made the table switches it on.

It is a kids' game with nothing to decide. Every move is forced: you must turn the top card, and nobody, you included, can look into a stack. It is luck from the first card to the last. What we could do is make it easy to follow. After every reveal the board tells you whose card it was and which card it landed on. It names the suit in words, says whether it matched and how many cards moved. Each seat's stack and collected pile show as counts. The pile shows its top card, its size and the suit that would match it, spelled out as well as drawn, so colour never carries it alone.

You turn each card yourself by tapping your stack, the second card after a capture included. When the stack will not tap it says why: not your turn, you are out, a card is being turned, or the game is over. If you would rather talk than tap, switch on auto-reveal and the table turns your card a beat after your turn comes round. It is off by default, it is yours alone, and reloading the page turns it off again.

Who it is for

The best game for friends is one where everybody knows the rules, or nobody does. Rang Milanti gets you there in a minute. The rules fit in a breath, and since nobody can see a stack, nobody has an edge. Speed is still our pick for pure fun. This is the one for when you want to talk. With auto-reveal on, a typical game takes a few minutes at about a second a reveal, and the pile changes hands while you catch up. It is free, like every table here. An ad may turn up now and then, kept small if we can help it.